Day 7 of Creative Camp

Day 7 of taking myself to Creative Camp.

I’m a creative director trying to create in public without letting the public become the point. So I built a camp instead of a content strategy. And you’re invited to join me.

Today’s randomly generated prompt is:

Paint.
People.
Share.

And this is my reaction:

But I have to trust the YES AND! to take me where I need to go even though I don't WANT to go there. (Spoiler: I get there eventually, don’t you worry.)

The "Share" twist could mean give away OR collaborate.

“I could go live," I think to myself, followed by a swift, “Well, now I KINDA HAVE TO…” (That Damn Rule #4 will get ya every time!)

Back my roots.

During Free School, when I burned down the plastics in my personal brand Barbie box, I went live all the time and just riffed: free, unhinged, unruly.

I miss that wild card bitch.

So I hit the big red button, grab some craft paper and my 8-year-old’s watercolors, and wonder aloud to a live audience, what should I paint?

“Should I paint you? What it feels like to have an audience?"

Who ARE you, anyway?

You see me, but I don’t see you.

I see a tiny pinprick camera, a red light, a glowing ring.

I don’t see you...but I feel you.

5 years ago, I set out to write a book on what branding ourselves is doing to our humanity. It led me through the dark history of branding itself and doing this while trying to build a personal brand online — so I could SELL the book on what branding is doing to us — just about scrambled my brain.

I could not finish that thesis while plugged into the machine. I had to unplug to see what I actually felt about all this.

And as I drew closer to creating here with YOU again — whoever you may be — I imagined you this way...a rainbow faceless blob.

A mass of undulating faces, like Ursula’s sea urchins in The Little Mermaid or the crowd at Bonnaroo the one and only time I tried mushrooms….

You feel different on different days.

Sometimes supportive.
Sometimes angry.
Sometimes menacing.

A mix of people I know and maybe love? Tumbling around together with strangers, haters, lurkers. faceless randos, bots, the government (?), spies, perverts, who knowsssssss.

But when I try to frame this rainbow mass, contain the blob under glass, it isn’t quite right.

This calls for collage. (That sounds familiar.)

I grab an Adbusters magazine, which feels so fitting for a piece of art about what it feels like to be in “relationship” with an Instagram audience.

A second piece of art I didn’t anticipate making.

How it feels to be subsumed in a sea of words.

Some angry.
Some heartfelt.
Some hopeful.
Some unhinged.

Accusations.
Judgments.
Pleas.
Surveillance.

So loud.
So noisy.
So unfriendly.
So scary.

When you imagine the Internet, do you think of the faces of the people YOU follow — the people you know and love, or like, or hate — or do you imagine the rainbow blob, scraps of words, a collage heap of anger and heart and hope and hysteria?

Because I think mine’s the latter.

And it hurts a bit.

Like my lungs hurt breathing in this wildfire smoke this morning.

We don’t talk enough about what it feels like to have an audience.

We play this little game where we broadcast our lives online and then pretend we didn’t realize anyone could see it.

Oh, you saw that thing I posted on the INTERNET? Haha, were you stalking me? LOOOOL.

This is why personal branding scrambles the brain.

My brain.
Your brain.
Our collective cultural brain.

A brand is a memory. The space you rent in your audience’s mind. But a personal brand perceives back.

And I don’t have a tidy way to reconcile that. But I do have camp.

Creative Camp is my experiment in creating in public without letting the public become the point.

Can I resist the machine from inside the practice?

Can I fight for my own creativity out loud?

I think that’s what this container is doing.

The prompts.
The rules.
The Yes AND!
The audience.
The time limit.
All of it.

I couldn’t have designed it better if I did it myself. (And I did it myself!)

Branding wants me in a tidy little box. Creative Camp is giving me room for the whole damn collage.

The ray of sunshine AND the funny clown AND the muckraker AND the firestarter AND the brand strategist gone wild AND the wild card bitch.

And.

AND!

AND!!!!!!!!

AND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And? What about you?

Welcome to camp.